Catharsis
by Iulia
Summary: [SasuSaku] [Catharsis] a sudden emotional breakdown or climax that constitutes overwhelming feelings of great pity, sorrow, laughter or any extreme change in emotion that results in the renewal, restoration and revitalization for living.


**Disclaimer: **I don't own Naruto. All I own is the plot. All the characters belong to Kishi...

**A/N: **Hi everyone... am relatively new at fic writing.. so.. er.. please tell me what you think, okay? thanks...

**CATHARSIS**

Sasuke stared at the ceiling, unmoving from his prone position. His back was starting to hurt, so he found it appropriate to lie on his side. In doing so, he was affronted with the sight of an empty vase. Why it upset him… he didn't know… or maybe he did know, he just didn't want to acknowledge it. Seeing the offensive vase made him go back to lying flat on his back. The ceiling, he decided, was far less upsetting.

It wasn't the fact that a rather girly vase was on his bedside, it was the fact that there was an empty girly vase that bothered him. No flowers… that meant that he had had no guests recently. He had been in Konoha for eight days now, and, as much as he wished that someone would still welcome him, apparently, there was none. He wondered why he came back in the first place. He had cut the bonds, he knew there was nothing left for him here. Of course nobody would want him back, he was a criminal, a traitor, he just wasn't welcome in Konoha anymore. He was sure that if he didn't have a blood-line limit, the Hokage would have had him executed by now.

Unfortunately, with the culmination of his revenge, he found that he had too much time to think…

And so his thoughts drifted to a certain blonde haired boy. He had much doubt that Naruto would want to visit him. Hell, the boy probably wanted to kill him. He was sure that he would never be forgiven by the boy who was once the closest thing he had to a friend. No, Naruto would never forgive him, not after he killed Iruka-sensei.

Inevitably, his thoughts shifted from one teammate to the other. Sakura… the girl who admitted that she loved him with all her heart. It always did puzzle him that she found something in him that was worth loving. Although Sasuke knew that a lot of girls claimed that they loved him back when he was twelve, he knew that only Sakura had been sincere. She saw him at his weakest, and she saw him at his worst. She knew that he was a jerk, yet she still found it in her heart to love him. He wondered if she still loved him now… probably not. The empty vase was a testament to that. Part of him resented her for it, part of him wanted to accuse her of lying to him about her undying love. Yet he knew that his feeling was as unfounded as it was irrational. Sakura's love had been true and if she no longer loved him, it was because he didn't deserve that love in the first place, and she finally realized that.

Solitude… didn't he once tell Sakura how painful that was. Yet here he was again… alone, staring at the white-washed walls of his hospital room. There was a strange feeling of déjà vu, this was exactly the same as that time when he woke up after the massacre of the Uchiha clan. He was alone… and that thought alone was enough to send him to the edge. He was on his breaking point, he knew it. Anytime, his string would snap and he would be gone. Perhaps it was for the best, he was in so much pain and he was very very very tired…

----

Sakura paced up and down the narrow corridor before finally stopping in front of a door, trying her best to ignore the ANBU member who was looking at her as if she was crazy. She looked up at the sign above the room and sighed. Room 208, it read. Of course she didn't get the room wrong. She practically lived in this place, and she knew every nook and cranny of it like the back of her hand. It would have been impossible… not to mention absurd… to be lost. The hospital was one of the only places she went to anymore, other than that Ramen Store her blonde friend adored. Speaking of her blonde friend, she wondered exactly where he was. But back to the matter at hand… this was the right room… of that she had no doubt. The thing is... he was in there… behind the very door that she was staring at. It had taken her three days to lose all her anger at him, and when she got over her ire, she spent another five days battling with her pride, trying to keep herself from rushing over to the room and hugging him senseless, but at the eighth day of his return, she finally succumbed to her urge to see him and rushed to the hospital, and now it was taking her forever to gather enough courage to knock.

She raised her hand to knock, but immediately lowered it again. A stifled giggle from the ANBU member who was assigned to guard the room earned an icy glare from the pink-haired kunoichi. She was nervous, of that she was sure. She wiped her hands on her skirt in an effort to remove the moisture that had gathered in her palms. Satisfied that her hands were relatively dry, she raised her hand again. Wetting her dry lips, she knocked and went in.

----

Upon hearing the knock, Sasuke automatically closed his eyes, assuming that the one outside his door was another nurse. The one difference between this hospitalization and the last was that the nurses were far more polite and caring on the previous occasion. Now, they were just downright rude. They were oozing with dislike for him, and he didn't blame them. The war with sound was probably still fresh in their minds, and who could forget that the commander was once a shinobi of the leaf? He understood their reasons but it didn't stop him from hating them either. Then, he felt the side of the bed's mattress sink from the weight of a person sitting beside him. This was no nurse, he was sure of that. Yet he still refused to open his eyes and it was then that he heard it…

"Sasuke?"

That was undoubtedly Sakura's voice. Even if it had matured over the years, it still had that certain pitch to it that told him that it was indeed Sakura. Maybe she had come for him, maybe she still loved him, maybe she still cared for him. But his logic told him that it was impossible that Sakura was there. She wouldn't come. Perhaps his mind was just playing tricks on him. He wanted to believe that it was real, yet he had been let down too many times in his life that he was bereft of all hope. And for that reason, he decided to keep his eyes closed. He was scared that if he would open them, she wouldn't be there, and he would be disappointed greatly… alone once more. And surely, if life played yet another cruel joke on him at this point in his life, he was sure that he would break.

----

"Sasuke?", she said tentatively. When the boy didn't even stir, she wondered if she even heard her.

"Sasuke…", she said, a little bit louder this time. Her eyebrows creased, annoyed that the boy still refused to acknowledge her. He wasn't sleeping, she was sure of that. There was no movement beneath his eyelids, her studies told her that no rapid eye movement meant that a person wasn't really sleeping that deeply. Besides, she had watched him sleep on countless occasions back when she was twelve, she knew when he was sleeping and when he was not.

She wondered why she was even there and briefly considered turning back and going home before dismissing the idea completely, she had come too far to back out now. Sighing, she decided to wait for a while before trying again. She took that time to examine his hospital room. It reeked of medicine, and it became apparent that the nurses weren't taking good care of her former teammate. Part of her resented them for their poor treatment, but the other part of her told her that they had reason to maltreat the guy. Either way, he smelled like someone who had been in the hospital for days and had not taken a bath since his admission, and his bandages were old, they were dirty, as if they weren't changed for days. Some of his wounds, she noted, had some pus in them, an indication that they were starting to get infected. She felt a pang in her heart, she hated seeing him like this. And it made her feel guilty that she spent eight days battling with her inner demons while he lay here, neglected. Thinking that she should at least make up for what she did, she fished into her medical bag and took out a basin, a wash cloth, and some fresh bandages. The medic in her was taking over. And, with a faint blush, she started peeling away the rotten bandages and cleaning his wounds. And at each stroke, her heart started hurting more and more. It wasn't long before she reached a particularly deep wound, and became overwhelmed by love and pity and anger. This was her Sasuke-kun, and he was in so much pain, and it was nobody's fault but his own.

----

Sasuke tried his best to keep his eyes closed as he felt someone cleaning his wounds. The action was just so beautiful that it tugged at the strings of his heart, it made him feel loved, and he was afraid that maybe it wasn't true. He was afraid that if he opened his eyes, he would still be wrapped in those rags they used on him. But at the moment he felt someone envelope him in a crushing hug, his eyes snapped open. This, too, had a nostalgic feel to it. But unlike his earlier feeling of déjà vu, this held a more pleasant memory attached to it. He had woken up to Sakura's hug many years ago in the hospital too, and it just felt too good. The first thing he saw was a mass of pink hair and he knew immediately that he wasn't dreaming, Sakura really was here. It was all real, it wasn't just another cruel joke that fate was playing on him. And, as he felt her hot tears on his neck, his own tears, which had been kept in check since the massacre of his clan, flowed endlessly… it was like the dam burst and the river was rushing through in torrents. All those years of pent up emotions, all of those years of welled up pain, they were all unleashed when Sakura started crying for him. And he cried because he was relieved. He was relieved that he wasn't alone anymore. He was relieved that he still had something in his life, that despite the fact that he did not deserve any love, someone was still willing enough to give him love. He was relieved by the fact that someone still cared for him. He was relieved that Sakura was still with him.

And, if it was even possible, she held him even tighter when she heard him crying. And they just stayed there, holding each other for who knows how long. It seemed like forever before they released each other. Both spent from all that crying.

Sasuke knew that he was no longer alone… Sakura was with him, and she would never leave him. Because even if he had become the worst person someone could ever be, she could still forgive him, she could still love him. He had lost everything when he was a child, but by being everything to him, she had given him everything back. And he could feel his heart mending again. He was no longer empty. And he knew, he knew that she would never ever leave him, because she really did love him with all her heart. And he was glad that she came, because he would have been lost had she been unforgiving.

Sakura… she was glad that she could be with Sasuke again. She didn't care about what would happen after this, she knew that it would be difficult, she knew that there would be many trials, but she couldn't bring herself to care. All that mattered was that Sasuke was with her again.

There weren't any declarations of love, in fact, no words were exchanged. But as they looked at each other's eyes, Sakura's red and puffy from all that crying, and Sasuke's ringed with dark circles from lack of sleep, they realized one thing: this was the start, the beginning of something new. _Catharsis…_


End file.
